David Amram on Wonderama

While we're watching counterculture moments on television from the 1960s,here's something else I just stumbled across: the joyful jazz composer, performer and beatnik David Amram on the kid's show Wonderama. He demonstrates his favorite instruments, and naturally leads a jam session with the kids, who are way into it.

Amram turns 82 years old this weekend, which means the promising new film David Amram: The First 80 Years must be nearing its second birthday ... and I haven't seen it yet! I hope this documentary film will reach more theaters, and will get a much-deserved spot on public television or some other music channel. One thing's for sure: audiences will love it, because Amram never fails to win an audience over. Here's the trailer for the film:

David Amram has collaborated with everyone from Jack Kerouac to Dizzy Gillespie to Charles Mingus to Leonard Bernstein to Bob Dylan to Raffi to Willie Nelson to Phish. I hope this film captures a lot of his past music and poetry performances; I wonder if it also features his daughter Adira Amram's explosive, highly original music/dance/comedy live show, which is currently easy to catch at various hipster nightclubs in New York City and around the world. Happy birthday David Amram!

5 Responses to "David Amram on Wonderama"

by TKG on Friday, November 16, 2012 09:09 pm

This is a wonderful and whimsical post and I think you for it.

I remember Wonderama and Bob McAlister, but it wasn't an always watch show for us growing up. It may not have been on that long where I grew up in the Bay Area. It was a New York show and a bit exotic in some way.

I always will remember one guy they had on who played his head like a drum with his knuckles. He opened his mouth and his skull made a hollow sound and he could modulate the tone by how much he opened or closed his mouth.

I tried it and it worked -- anyone can do it. I still do it to this day at times.

And I remember the time they had green bagels for St Patricks Day. I thought that seemed like the coolest thing of all time, looked delicious and I wanted one. I didn't really know what a bagel was, though.

David Amram is such a treasure. A friend had the African Thumb Piano way back when and I had a lot of fun goofing around with it.

Ted Joans was born Theodore Jones on July 4, 1928 on a riverboat in Cairo, Illinois. His father, a riverboat entertainer, put him off the boat in Memphis at age twelve and gave him a trumpet. He is a painter, a trumpeter, and a poet.

Magic Trip, a new film by Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood, tells the story of novelist Ken Kesey's 1964 road trip across America in a painted bus with a troupe of fanciful hippies and legendary beatnik Neal Cassady at the wheel.

In this dream, the kid wears a glove on the top of his beanie, is chased by weird chubby thugs in brightly colored suits who resemble proto-Oompa-Loompas, dodges a pair of roller-skating old men who share a common beard, and is forced to participate in a 500-kid piano performance on a swirling 5000 key piano.

George Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess' was based on a novel by DuBose Heyward. Porgy was a best seller in the late 1920s. Gershwin read the book and thought it would be the perfect vehicle for an American folk opera that he had been planning to compose. He contacted Heyward ...

Ted Joans was born Theodore Jones on July 4, 1928 on a riverboat in Cairo, Illinois. His father, a riverboat entertainer, put him off the boat in Memphis at age twelve and gave him a trumpet. He is a painter, a trumpeter, and a poet.

Magic Trip, a new film by Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood, tells the story of novelist Ken Kesey's 1964 road trip across America in a painted bus with a troupe of fanciful hippies and legendary beatnik Neal Cassady at the wheel.

In this dream, the kid wears a glove on the top of his beanie, is chased by weird chubby thugs in brightly colored suits who resemble proto-Oompa-Loompas, dodges a pair of roller-skating old men who share a common beard, and is forced to participate in a 500-kid piano performance on a swirling 5000 key piano.

George Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess' was based on a novel by DuBose Heyward. Porgy was a best seller in the late 1920s. Gershwin read the book and thought it would be the perfect vehicle for an American folk opera that he had been planning to compose. He contacted Heyward ...